given a proper ceremony. There weren't as many as Joss had expected; Radas's army had taken the brunt of the casualties.
'What do you Qin do with your dead, Anji?'
'If we're at war, we leave them. Once the spirit is fled, the body is only a husk. If in camp, the women have their own rites.'
'And in the empire?'
'In the empire, the Beltak priests control all passages, birth, death, marriage, fealty between master and servant. They take a tithe at the market, and collect tolls on the roads and at every gate.'
'A fence against every manner of temptation,' said Joss more sharply than he intended.
'A knife,' said Anji, 'with which to protect themselves.'
'A knife is a useful tool, but in the hands of a drunk man or one who minds only his own greed, it is a dangerous weapon.'
'Therefore we keep knives out of the hands of those we cannot trust to wield them wisely.'
'Six cloaks you said, Anji. But I count only five.'
'Did I forget to mention? The cloak of Twilight is the sixth. Here we are.'
The council of captains had been dismissed, and in its place Joss found himself alone among Qin officers, a single Olossi militia captain, and the hierophant Joss had seen before. The
Lantern priest was holding a charcoal stick and tracing lines according to Tohon's directions: Here. No, to the right. Erase that bit. Yes, down that way.
Anji, Sengel, and Deze strolled up to the table as the guardsmen who had followed him around camp fell back to join the ring of guards. A soldier stood beside each stout pole that held up the awning, and two men guarded the curtained entrance off under the right-hand wing of the awning.
The men pressed up to the table, all but Sengel settling into stools as Tohon drank cordial.
Two reeves hurried up, escorted by guards. 'Our apologies for keeping you waiting, Commander,' said the curly-headed youth with a scar on his chin.
'If you three will report on your observations, we'll listen and ask questions.' Anji offered the reeves stools and gave Tohon his whip to point with.
The reeves deferred to Tohon, offering asides only when he could not explain or had missed some typical local object or tree or landmark. They had flown above the Istri Walk to Toskala and thence along the Ili Cutoff and across the vale of Iliyat to the Liya Pass.
'That's Candle Rock,' Joss said when they described a high sanctuary where they'd camped for the night. 'You can see Ammadit's Tit from the rock. It's a Guardian's altar. And that abandoned compound you saw, on the way up? That was once a temple to Ushara, although it was popularly supposed that they trained assassins there. There was a woodsmen's encampment near there, although it's likely long since grown over. That's where Reeve Marit and her eagle Flirt were killed. Theirs are the first known deaths definitely linked to Lord Radas. I think it might have been the first cadre of his army.'
The curtained entrance off to one side swayed, and a woman ducked out. Tohon smiled, making room for her, but she snagged a stool, walked around the table as if to peruse the map from all angles before she fetched up, quite as if by accident, next to Joss. She set down the stool and herself in it. Her hip pressed against his. She leaned over the low table, one of her breasts brushing his arm as she used the hilt of a knife to tap the spot on the map he'd just been discussing.
'The temple of Ushara was attacked and all its hierodules and kalos murdered.' She straightened, setting the knife back to hold
down a curling corner. 'The many hieros across the land have never let any hierodule or kalos forget it, either. Didn't you ever hear the rest of the story, Reeve Joss? They found a young hierodule — barely fourteen — chained to a death willow and raped and abused, as if to spit on the generosity of the Devouring One. She was dead, a knife to the heart.'
'I was one of those who found her corpse,' said Joss so quietly that everyone looked at him. 'Which is a moment I will never forget as long as I live. As you say, a knife to the heart.'
The words had an odd effect on Anji, whose gaze had drifted past Joss toward a movement in camp beyond the awning. His expression tightened in a puzzled frown, then opened to a look of sheer violent falling helplessness as he recognized what he was looking at. He leaped to his feet, his stool tipping and falling behind him. He fisted a hand and for one breath Joss could have sworn Anji swayed as though he had taken a knife to the heart. Sengel caught his arm. Stepping sideways, shaking off Sengel, he strode around the table and out from under the awning. Joss twisted to see.
Out of the dusk settling its wings over the encampment limped Chief Tuvi carrying a bundle in his arms. Neh, no bundle but a living, squirming baby. Tuvi was carrying Anji's son.
Joss stood, intending to follow, but Chief Esigu blocked him. Sengel and Deze trotted up on either side of Anji as Anji halted in front of Tuvi and engulfed the baby in his arms. Tuvi's lips moved, speaking words Joss was too far away to hear.
Sengel and Deze grabbed Anji under the elbows, and Tuvi swept the child back. The two chiefs held their captain as his legs gave way.
Had the wind failed? For it seemed the entire camp was holding its breath, taking in the news with the captain, still supported by his senior officers.
Kesta and Peddonon jogged out of the dusk, circling wide around the knot of Qin, who stopped Peddonon at a distance but allowed Kesta to hurry up to the awning.
She grasped Joss's arm, pulling him aside. 'Siras flew Chief Tuvi in from the Barrens. The captain's wife was murdered up the Spires, that place they call Merciful Valley.'
'Murdered?' As well say the sky was green, or that folk preferred bread to rice given the choice. 'Who would murder Mai?' Beautiful, clever Mai. The Ox walks with feet of clay,
but its heart leaps to the heavens where it seeks the soul which fulfills it.
'One of her slaves stabbed her. Siras says she fell into the pool, and her body was lost in the depths beneath the falls. Maybe that makes sense to you.' She caught him as he sat heavily, almost tipping over the stool.
Siras came running, but Qin soldiers halted him beside Peddonon as the chiefs steered Anji in under the awning and sat him down on his stool beside the camp table.
'How did she outflank me?' Anji asked, the question all the more wrenching for his even tone, like he was asking for a report on the weather.
'She had an agent in your midst all along, that slave named Sheyshi,' said Tuvi. 'None of us suspected. The girl played her part, and none of us suspected all that time.'
'Commander Beje must have known.'
'That Sheyshi was your mother's agent? It's likely. That your mother would strike through the slave? How could any Qin man guess? There was nothing you could have done, Anjihosh. The princess was caged in the women's palace for many years. She is far more skilled on this battlefield than you or I. She defeated you with a superior flanking movement.'
'I should have known,' said Anji as he reached for a knife that Chief Deze snatched up before Anji could touch it. Anji went on as if he had not noticed, hands splayed open on the careful detailed lines of the map. 'I should have suspected. Mai is the sharpest knife a man could hope to possess. The biggest threat to my mother's power. I should have brought Mai with me, never let her leave my side-' His hands fisted. He bent as in a gust of wind, and his eyes lost focus. A sound more gasp than moan strangled in his throat.
The baby had begun to noisily fuss, wanting his father, and Tuvi thrust the angry child onto Anji's lap, anything to take that stunned blank expression off the captain's face.
Joss had known these feelings once. Nothing would make the killing blow easier to absorb; nothing could ease the searing pain. Only the baby, who demanded his father's attention by beginning to cry.
'What have you been feeding him?' asked Anji in a harsh, hoarse voice.
'Goat's milk and nai porridge,' said Tuvi. Revealed in lantern
light, his face and hands were netted with scars, as though he had plunged into a burning spider's web. He stood awkwardly, and when a soldier brought a stool, sat gingerly as if every movement was agony. Yet his his gaze was bent on his captain as Chief Deze sent soldiers to find goat's milk and nai porridge. Anji soothed the child by speaking in another language, the words flowing like a chant. His expression was scoured raw; his eyes flared
